The present invention relates to a clamping mechanism that fixes a card-shaped electronic component that has been inserted into a slot provided on a board or at another location, and an electronic apparatus having this clamping mechanism. The present invention is suitable, for example, for a clamping mechanism that fixes an expansion card that has been inserted into an expansion slot or an expansion bus slot on a motherboard in desktop personal computer (“PC”), a word processor, and other electronic apparatuses, and an electronic apparatus having such a clamping mechanism.
A motherboard is a board provided with various circuit elements, such as a memory, a chip set, an expansion slot and a BIOS ROM as well as a CPU. The expansion card is a printed board that functionally expands a PC and other electronic apparatuses singularly or by enabling them to communicate with an external peripheral or expansion unit. An expansion card is called an expansion board or PCI board, such as a SCSI card, a network card, a sound card, a video card, a memory card, and various interface cards.
Along with recent developments of information industries, PCs have wide spread among various personal and business applications. This spread has diversified users' demands to PCs, but multifunctional and small PCs have increasingly demanded. One solution for the demand for a multifunctional PC is to mount various types of expansion cards into an expansion slot on a motherboard.
The expansion card typically includes a card part that arranges various types of circuits, a first interface connector that electrically connects the card part to a motherboard, and optionally a second interface connector that connects a certain type of expansion unit to a PC. The latter example includes, for example, a SCSI card mounted on a PC, and a second interface connector of the SCSI card connected to an external unit, such as a CD-ROM (or CD-R/RW) drive, a MO drive and a scanner.
The expansion card is electrically connected to a motherboard and supported in a slot when the first interface connector is inserted into the motherboard. The PC may further include a clamping mechanism that presses and clamps the expansion card from a surface opposite to the first interface and strengthens the fixture of the expansion card, preventing pullout and contact inhibition of the card.
The conventional clamping mechanism, however, structurally forms dead space that is not used always inside the electronic apparatus, inhibiting its miniaturization. A description will now be given of a conventional clamping mechanism 500 and its problems with reference to FIGS. 19 to 21. Here, FIGS. 19 and 21 are enlarged perspective views of the conventional PC near the clamping mechanism 500. FIG. 19 shows the clamping mechanism 500 that fixes a high expansion card 10a. FIG. 21 shows the clamping mechanism 500 that fixes a low expansion card 10b. FIG. 20 is an enlarged view of a fixing member 520 used for the clamping mechanism 500. Here, reference numerals without an alphabetical letter generalize reference numerals with small alphabetical letters.
Referring to FIGS. 19 and 20, the expansion card 10a is inserted into one of slots 610 provided on the motherboard 600 perpendicular to the motherboard 600. S1 is an insertion direction of the expansion card 10a. S2 is a direction reverse to the direction S1, or a height direction of the expansion card 10a. T is a length direction of the expansion card 10 perpendicular to the directions S1 and S2, which are generically referred to as a direction S. The motherboard 600 is fixed onto a PC frame 702.
One end of the clamping mechanism 500 is fixed onto a PC frame 704, and its other end is fixed onto a support strip that is fixed onto a frame 706. The clamping mechanism 500 includes a support member 510 that supports one or more fixing members 520, and one or more fixing members 520 each of which presses and secures the expansion card 10a. The support member 510 is arranged above the expansion card 10 in the PC so that its longitudinal direction is orthogonal to the length direction T of the mounted expansion card 10. Each fixing member 520 is screwed onto the support member 510.
Referring now to FIG. 20, each fixing member 520 has a bent, approximately L-shape, and includes a height adjustment part 522 having a fixing groove 523, and a pressure part 524 that presses the expansion card 10. The fixing member 520 is fixed onto the support member 510 by inserting a screw (not shown in FIG. 20) into the fixing groove 523 and a certain screw hole in the support member 510. In use, the screw is unfastened and the fixing member 520 moves in the direction S under guide by in the fixing groove 523 in the height adjustment part 522 until the pressure part 524 contacts the edge 12 of the expansion card 10a. Then, the height adjustment part 522 is screwed so that the pressure part 524 contacts the edge 12 of the expansion card 10a in the insertion direction S1 with a predetermined compression force.
While another method for clamping an expansion card has been also known which previously provides an attachment plate to an end of an expansion card and fixes it onto a PC frame through plural screws, the above clamping mechanism 500 has an advantage in that it more easily fixes the expansion card 10 than the conventional method since the expansion card 10 may be fixed by adjusting and determining a position of the fixing member 520 through one screw.
Although the fixing member 500 may clamp the expansion cards 10 of different heights within a length of the height adjustment part 522, the clamping mechanism 500 is required to use a higher height adjustment part 522b than the height adjustment part 522, as shown in FIG. 21, along with diversified functions, shapes and heights of recent expansion cards 10. However, it is arduous to use the height adjustment parts 522 of different lengths according to types of the expansion unit 10. In addition, the clamping mechanism 500 should be compatible with any type of expansion card since a user later often attaches the expansion card. On the other hand, when all the height adjustment parts 522 are replaced with the height adjustment parts 522b, the PC comes to form the dead space, which enlarges the PC contrary to a demand of miniaturization.
Moreover, some expansion card 10 has a connector and part of circuit pattern near its edge 12 at a position to be fixed by the fixing member 520 and requires, in this case, a contact position of the fixing member 520 to move in the direction T of the expansion card 10. It is arduous to increase the number of support members 510 separately for this purposes.